Appreciation: 'Barney Miller's' old soul Abe Vigoda

Abe Vigoda, a character actor best known for his roles in 'Barney Miller' and 'The Godfather' has passed away at the age of 94.
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Vigoda certainly had fun with the death hoaxes, however. One famous example was on NBC's 'Late Night,' when he walked in on David Letterman, who was trying to summon his ghost. "I'm not dead yet, you pinhead," he declared. The 'Late Night' running gag continued into the Conan O'Brien years.(Photo: Andy Kropa, Getty Images)

Which may be why many of us thought age would never catch up to him — and why some of you may have thought it already had, after premature reports of his death began circulating decades ago.

Tall, lanky, comically grim, with a perpetual hangdog expression on his face and a moan in his voice, Vigoda, who died Tuesday at 94, got his show-business start in the theater. He made his first TV appearance in 1949, but didn’t break through till two decades later, when he was in his '50s. But boy, did he break through — first in 1972, as the ill-fated Corleone confidante Sal Tessio in The Godfather, and then, more iconically, in 1974 as Detective Phil Fish in ABC's classic cop comedy Barney Miller.

Fish. It was a name that fit the Brooklyn-born Vigoda’s style, and a character that became so identified with him, he never broke free. Old, tired, constantly complaining about his feet, his hemorrhoids, and his wife Bernice, Fish was Barney Miller’s everyman elder statesman, a representative of a New York that seemed to be vanishing in the ‘70s but may have been more tenacious than we imagined.

Barney was a very popular show and Fish was its most popular character, which became a blessing and a curse to Vigoda. Two years into Barney’s run, that popularity led to a spinoff, Fish, that even at the time was considered by many to be ill-advised. For a brief while he appeared in both shows, but by the fall of 1977 he was off on his own — and by spring of 1978, his own show was cancelled. Barney ran on until 1982 without him, save for one 1981 guest appearance.

He was only 57 when Fish went off the air, but that role had branded him, not just as an old man, but as an old man nearer to death than thee. Indeed, hoaxes about his death became a recurring joke, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and elsewhere. And while Vigoda laughed them off, they surely took their toll on his career in an industry that puts such a premium on youth and vigor. Vigorous was never Vigoda’s comic trademark.

But goodness, for a while there, did he make ill health seem like the funniest thing on earth.

Vigoda might be equally well known for having survived multiple false death reports and lived to joke about it. Vigoda was erroneously reported dead starting in 1982 by 'People' and again in 1987 by a New Jersey TV station. Astrid Stawiarz, Getty Images

Vigoda certainly had fun with the death hoaxes, however. One famous example was on NBC's 'Late Night,' when he walked in on David Letterman, who was trying to summon his ghost. "I'm not dead yet, you pinhead," he declared. The 'Late Night' running gag continued into the Conan O'Brien years. Andy Kropa, Getty Images